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No country worldwide comes close to matching the United States in military expenditure. In 2014, US military spending reached $571 billion, a huge distance ahead of second placed China's $129.4 billion. However, when military budgets are viewed as a percentage of a nation's GDP, things become very different indeed.

Saudi Arabia is spending more on its armed forces than ever before, boosting its military budget by 17 percent last year. The military now amounts to at least 10.4 percent of the kingdom's GDP, according to an estimate from SIPRI. By contrast,Washington'senormous military expenditure "only" amounts to 3.5 percent of GDP. In China, that falls to 2.1 percent.

Israel spent around $23 billion on its armed forces in 2014 and SIPRI estimated that this amounted to 5.2 percent of its GDP. Russia has embarked on a huge military spending binge which was estimated to have reached 4.5 percent of its GDP in 2014. This year, according to budget data, that has increased substantially to more than 9 percent of quarterly GDP, a rate of spending that is surely unsustainable.